Swine Flu Smoking Gun? CDC was Combining Flu Viruses in 2004

Last week, when what is now called a "swine flu" was first reported to be
infecting and killing some people in Mexico, health officials noted it was a strain of flu
never before seen. In fact, it is technically incorrect to call this simply a
"swine" flu. Analyses showed it's a mixture of swine, human and avian viruses,
according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Moreover, it is genetically different
from the fully human H1N1 seasonal influenza virus that has been circulating globally for
the past few years. Bottom line: the new flu virus contains DNA from avian,
swine viruses (including elements
from European and Asian viruses) and human viruses.

So did this curious mixture just develop naturally, out of the blue? Is it the result of
inhumane farming practices, as the Humane Society of the United States (http://www.hsus.org/) has suggested, that
exposes immune-compromised pigs to all sorts of animal and human feces?

Well, maybe. But let's go back and look at the facts to see if any other scenario could be
possible.

First of all, there's the troublesome detail that the virus has elements that come from
multiple continents. Then there's the fact that true swine flu is only rarely
transmissible to humans -- this flu is spreading human-to-human, most likely because it
contains DNA from human flu.

Could someone have deliberately mixed these viruses together? Is that possible?
Absolutely.

Was this virus mixing being done artificially in the lab, or had it already been done?
Yes.

Who was blending potentially viruses in labs? Were those horrible generic boogie men known
to Americans far and wide as "terrorists" doing it? There's no proof of
bioterrorism at work here yet. However, there is evidence the United States government has been
working on concocting new flu virus blends.

So could the hysteria-provoking, new swine flu have escaped from a lab? Or was it
deliberately released as some kind of test? When these kinds of questions are asked, the
knee-jerk reaction of the mainstream media (MSM)
is to giggle and talk about "conspiracy theories" and to joke about wearing
tinfoil hats.

But here's the potential smoking
gun, the facts that suggest a potential source of the pandemic could be CDC labs. And at the
very least, this possibility deserves thoughtful examination and research.

The University of Minnesota Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) is
hardly a place most Americans have heard about and, apparently, the Center's web site has
news the MSM isn't familiar with, either. But information they published years ago has now
taken on an urgent importance. CIDRAP, along with the Canadian newspaper Canadian
Press (CP), revealed back in 2004 that the CDC
was launching experiments designed to mix the H5N1 (avian) virus and human flu viruses.
The goal was to find out how likely it was such a "reassortant" virus would
emerge and just how dangerous it might be. Of course, it's logical to wonder if
they also worked with the addition of a swine flu virus, too.

Here's some background from the five-year-old report by the University of Minnesota
research center: "One of the worst fears of infectious disease experts
is that the H5N1 avian influenza
virus now circulating in parts of Asia
will combine with a human-adapted flu virus to create a deadly new flu virus that could
spread around the world. That could happen, scientists predict, if someone who is already
infected with an ordinary flu virus contracts the avian virus at the same time. The avian
virus has already caused at least 48 confirmed human illness cases in Asia, of which 35
have been fatal. The virus has shown little ability to spread from person to person, but
the fear is that a hybrid could combine the killing power of the avian virus with the
transmissibility of human flu viruses. Now, rather than waiting to see if nature spawns such a hybrid, US
scientists are planning to try to breed one themselves -- in the name of
preparedness."

And CDC officials actually confirmed the government had plans for the research. The CIDRAP
News folks did a great job covering this important issue, which was apparently mostly
ignored by the MSM back in 2004, and CIDRAP News wrote to the CDC for information. This e-mail produced an answer from CDC
spokesman David Daigle who admitted the CDC was working on the project in two ways.
"One is to infect cells in a laboratory tissue culture with H5N1 and human flu
viruses at the same time and then watch to see if they mix. For the human virus,
investigators will use A (H3N2), the strain that has caused most human flu cases in recent
years," the CIDRAP story stated. This co-infection approach was described as slow and
labor-intensive. However, it was a way to produce a new virus that appeared to be closer
to what develops in nature.

There was another, faster way CDC scientists could create the mix, too. Called reverse genetics, it involves piecing together
a new virus with genes from the H5N1 and H3N2 viruses. Reverse genetics had already been
used successfully to create H5N1 candidate vaccines in several laboratories, the CDC's
Daigle wrote. "Any viable viruses that emerge from these processes will be seeded
into animals that are considered good models for testing how flu viruses behave in
humans... The aim will be to observe whether the animals get sick and whether infected
animals can infect others," he revealed in his e-mail.

What's more, the CP reported the CDC had already made hybrid viruses with H5N1 samples
isolated from patients in Hong Kong
in 1997, when there was the first outbreak of that virus, dubbed the "Hong Kong
flu". It is not clear if the results of that research were ever published. Back in
2004, Dr. Nancy Cox, then head of the CDC's influenza branch, would tell the CP only:
"Some gene combinations could be produced and others could not."

The CP's report noted that the World Health Organization (WHO) had been
"pleading" for laboratories to do this blending-of-viruses research. The reason?
If successful, these flu mixes would back up WHO's warnings about the possibility of a flu pandemic. In fact, Klaus
Stohr, head of the WHO's global flu program at the time, told the CP that if the
experiments were successful in producing highly transmissible and pathogenic viruses, the
agency would be even more worried -- but if labs couldn't create these mixed flu viruses,
then the agency might have to ratchet down its level of concern.

The 2004 CIDRAP News report addressed the obvious risks of manufacturing viruses in labs
that, if released, could potentially spark a pandemic. However, the CDC's Daigle assured
the Minnesota research group the virus melding would be done in a biosafety level 3
(BSL-3) laboratory. "We recognize that there is concern by some over this type of
work. This concern may be heightened by reports of recent lab exposures in other lab
facilities," he told CIDRAP. "But CDC has an incredible record in lab safety and
is taking very strict precautions."

Five years later, we must ask more questions. Were those safety measures enough? Was the
CDC creating or testing any of these virus mixes in or near Mexico? What other potentially
deadly virus combinations has the US government created? Don't US citizens, as taxpayers
who funded these experiments, have a right to know? And for all the residents of planet
earth faced with a potentially deadly global epidemic, isn't it time for the truth? (Natural News, 4.29.2009, Sherry Baker,
Health Sciences Editor, See all
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